If the bill becomes law, the website operator would have to pay if someone was allowed to post anonymously on their site. The fine would be five-hundred dollars for a first offense and one-thousand dollars for each offense after that.

I really hope this falls on it's face. I can see the benefits of it however making it work and the steps to do so are what really have me worried.

Once they provide we must ensure that user's are registered before allowing them to post, the next step will be make sure we validate the user. I don't know how they think making someone create an account with some fake name will make postings less anonymous.

Mickey Mouse posted.... Good thing I had signed up for this account so you know who wrote this.

There is 2 sides to every coin. Do they really think posting full names is going to cut down on bullying? It will probably increase stalking and real crimes as folks will now be able to actually find the person they are pissed at...

Plus, the logistics behind requiring every website to validate a person's identity is nearly impossible to ensure accuracy, at least in a reasonable scenario that scales to the size of a site like eBay for instance.

This is not the first time this was tried. It does not stand a chance...

They tried the same thing in China in 2006 [webmasterworld.com]. Guess what happened? They had to give up on enforcement. There were too many loopholes to get around the requirements, like posting outside China, etc. Also the Chinese Internet users weren't going to have any of it. They complained heavily.

How would KY succeed where China, with all of its state sponsored censorship systems in place, failed?

Bill, my first reaction to this news was "geez, that sounds like something they'd do in China!" I didn't know China had already tried it.

I'm glad to hear that even China failed when they tried it.

Practical considerations aside, it's unbelievable that a state legislator would be unaware of the United States' illustrious history of anonymous postings. I guess Rep. Tim Couch has never heard of a fellow called "publius."

He really looks foolish making a silly bill like that. I REFUSE to allow personal info on ANY of my sites and remove it if they do and ban them if they do it again. It is TOO dangerous! Imagine...kids would have to as well? Boy, the pervs would LOVE that too! DURR! I mean that is a big, big DURRR. LOL.

Just a bunch of political garbage no way it will ever work just another waste of time and money. Most likely spent 10k just in writing the thing up.

Hmm I wonder I have a google blog and the post are on my server and the comments comments are really on google's server and not on my server so really I am not hosting the comments Google is so I wonder who is responsible for the post me or Google?

You got that right. You should have seen the chaos (and carnage) about 15 years ago when the government decided to go to a real-name system for all financial transactions.

I mean, come on- how dare the governemnt make people use their real names on bank accounts! Don't they know how difficult that makes it for people to hide millions of dollars?

Heard that 20% of the people have the family name of Park.

Nope- there are about 6 times as many Kims as Parks (Kims make up around 25-30% of the population).

But getting back on topic, a lot of Korean sites require (or used to require) registration with the person's Korean ID number. I believe it is/was mostly for e-commerce sites, but some community sites required it as well. So even if a person didn't use their real name as their screen name, it could still be traced back to a real person. (Unless that person used someone else's ID number to register.)

That sounds like the law that is attempting to be passed in New York forcing all internet retailers to collect sales taxes for all New York customer. Of course, the governer who was pushing that law has resigned.

Not to mention site-owner that does not have the knowledge (or cash at hand) to mod its reg system Furthermore how many will know how to verify an ID is a real one… more conn to gov central DBs and as a direct result more chances of hacking in the DBs

It is still in the tax bill that is in the process of being passed. Amazon has already geared up for the fight. This issue is similar and I am suprised some messageboards or very large social websites are not gearing up for a fight for this as well.

Stalking and harassment are one issue where laws cover issues like that, but freedom of speech is also a right of every American.